Hitman Absolution makes Agent 47 the target, offers new engine

We saw both a hands-off demo and a trailer for the new Hitman game, and the …

Agent 47 is on the run. The police are after him, and he's forced to skulk around a library, taking them out one by one. In a brief action sequence, he runs from a police helicopter, and the rush of air from the rotors blows elements of the environment this way and that. He finds himself in a room full of hippies, and in a moment of improvisation, he smashes a glass bong into the face of a police officer before stealing a uniform and sneaking off into the night.

Hitman Absolution is running on the new Glacier 2 engine and it looks very pretty. The big change isn't the graphics, however, it's the fact that while there will be more traditional Hitman levels, the game also turns the tables on Agent 47 by making him the target.

The game will switch between open and linear sections

Agent 47 can activate "instinct" mode at any time. He can see through walls to find his pursuers, and a burning line on the ground will even show you their path. I asked Martin Amor, the game's technology manager, if they're worried about finding themselves in a position much like Batman: Arkham Asylum, where players played with the detective view through the whole thing. He shook his head and pointed to an indicator at the bottom of the screen—you can only use the instinct view for a certain amount of time. You can recharge the ability by performing stealth kills or otherwise acting like an assassin.

In the video we saw sneaking, as well as action sequences such as the helicopter escape scene. "We try to vary it. There are levels that are like the traditional Hitman games, where you're placed in the middle of a level and you have to figure out what to do and you approach all the characters and you have to solve the puzzle... and there are levels that are more linear," Amor said. "The first section of the library is quite open; you can take many different paths," he explained.

Then things become more linear and the situation becomes more desperate for Agent 47. "We tried to balance the original Hitman game with some action sequences here and there," Amor explained. "We think it makes for a nice mix."

I asked about how much of the game you will spend being hunted, versus the amount of time you will spend as the hunter. "I'm not going to go into too much detail on that because it has to do with the story, and we want to talk about that at a later stage," he said. He understands why it's odd to see our favorite hired killer as the target of such an intense manhunt. This isn't what we're used to from the series.

"Maybe it's a bit unorthodox to show this focus on this right now, but we thought it gives a nice cinematic experience," he said. The note about the gaming being cinematic is telling: the scene where Agent 47 walks past the police wearing their uniform was taken from The Professional, and the score was very reminiscent of Inception. These are two influences I am comfortable with.

The game looks great, and we can't wait to learn more details. Hitman: Absolution is coming to the PS3, 360, and PC in 2012.

I really like the hitman series, they've been awesome games, but this instinct mode sounds like crap, the best feature of the hitman games, particular in really hard difficulties was the somewhat realistic take on it, thing's weren't overly sci-fi, and agent 47 wasn't a superhero either.

Wonder what it was about this game, which doesn't sound terribly creative (just a return to a good classic franchise), that made it worth Ben being more excited about than RAGE? Seems a bit inconsistent to me. I appreciate the preview though - the Hitman series was always really cool. Glad to see that it's still alive, though I wish we got a more in-depth preview. (Though I know it's got to be hard to give all these game a bunch of time, too!)

It'd be awesome if this instinct was a non-static, learning aspect of Agent 47. For example, it would start off showing you a path or position of your target that's not entirely correct and if your reaction and timing ends up correct (or better than the indications would have allowed for) anyway, that would make it more accurate next time. Incorrect timing wouldn't necessarily make your instinct less accurate next time, depending on how much you're off.

That way, you could also get away with calling it instinct, instead of having it be this superhero kind of power. Oh well. Perhaps in a couple of years. Or maybe we're just being a bit harsh about this

Wonder what it was about this game, which doesn't sound terribly creative (just a return to a good classic franchise), that made it worth Ben being more excited about than RAGE?

Rage is just a shooter; Hitman is something else. Well-done shooters are so two-a-penny they have subgenres. The stealth game has three major proponents, one of which (Splinter Cell) has increasingly gone 'action' and the other two (Thief and Hitman) release once in a blue moon.

I'm having a hard time understanding why people are looking forward to Rage. New graphics engine, yawn.

Sooo... their basic rational for the 'action' sequences, etc, is because it'll look cool? Kind of a drastic change to the hitman model that doesn't really have much of a good rational aside from probably trying to appeal to a larger audience.

Instinct mode makes sense in a not super-power kind of way. You play a guy who's an ace-hitman -- had countless jobs and loads of experience. He can work on a hunch and gut instinct, using his tacit knowledge to extrapolate from tiny details to make 'lucky guesses'. They obviously can't give you all this tacit knowledge so have to be a bit more literal in their implementation -- now I haven't seen how well they've done, but it seems a logical solution to that problem.

Hmmm a Hitman game with 'linear' sections....I am dubious. If I wanted to play a stealth game that wasn't really a stealth game anymore i'd go play a newer Splinter Cell. Still, I'll keep an open mind and eagerly await more information.

Once again will a feature designed to expand the audience by making it more accessible ruin the game for the non-tards?

EX: in ES: Oblivion, they had the waypoints on the mini and global map, a al MMO's. It was there to make the game easier and quicker to play for the reasons I mention if the first sentence of this post. However, once added, the designers relied upon it too much and it became practically impossible to go through the game without it. Plenty of quest directions or descriptions were hopelessly vague or innaccurate enough that it was either waste 3 hours running around featureless woods to find something you probably passed three times already, or just turn on the damn waypoint and be there in immediately. That's not really good game design. If they want to talk about "turning off the waypoint for a challenge", then let that actually be a challenge and not impossible.

There was "a door in a cliff north of here" I remember having to find, but the door turned out to be in a somewhat large rock outcrop that could not be described as a cliff, and the door was so perfeclty hidden, you could walk right by it and not even notice that this section of rock was actually a door. Only if you got RIGHT next to it did you ever get a prompt for "using". Nevermind the hour I wasted looking farther north where there were some genuin cliffs before I felt forced to turn the waypoint back on. Even after I turned it back on, I walked to the spot and moved back and forther several times only to accidently discover the door not even exactly where the waypoint said it was. grrr..... =-]

Sort of a similar thing happened in Batman: AA and that visual shebang, but not realy as bad. At least I only turned that on to get a situationly advantage to plan my strategy, then off it went. I probably left it on more so at the beginning of the game since it looked cool.

Its nice if you add feature X for people who we might deam "more casual", but you can't then design the game around it so that the less casual people are forced to use it. Then its not really a feature, its a requirement... (ok, fine, not that a requiremnt and feature need to be different things, but you get what I mean). Even the people you might deam "casual" might want to turn it off sometimes too, or on a second run. Does making a game more approachable really mean designing it so a coma patient can win it? Propor intro level's and clever tutorials and genuinly different difficulty setting are you really need...

So, in that second screen shot, is there an option to join the guy on the couch, or do you have to kill him? Because the latter would be totally harshing his mellow. And that's just not cool.

My interest is piqued here, but the linear aspect is slightly worrisome; the way I see it is just a cutscene in which I'm more involved. Which is fine, as long as it doesn't suck up too much of the overall gameplay time. I just don't want to see this franchise jump genres into Heavy Rain turf...